Randy White - Dead of Night

“Did your brother know Dr. Stokes? The autism could’ve gotten them together.”

“Possible, maybe probably-now that I know he had some contact with EPOC. Jobe was big on vitamins.”

“What about Tropicane? Any friends there? Someone who might be hanging around the office that late, waiting for his call?”

The woman shook her head: No. Said that Jobe being Jobe, he didn’t have personal relationships, especially with employers. He contacted clients at their office, never at home.

“But why would he call both offices that late, when he was in trouble?”

She said, “A clock meant nothing to him. Maybe someone was supposed to answer. I don’t know.”

Finally, I mentioned the guinea worms, told her that I’d found the parasite in his house, nothing more, and asked if Jobe had ever been to Africa. Could he have been doing research?

If the animal’s life cycle included water, she said, he might be studying guinea worms. But, no, he wouldn’t leave the country, and definitely not for Africa. He hated travel.

“A year or so ago, he surprised me by going to Cuba for some kind of meeting. When I asked about it, all he said was, ‘Never again.’ That’s how much he despised travel.”

Disturbing, but I didn’t react. The woman had enough to deal with.

Frieda is a lean, handsome woman who usually dresses more like a fishing guide than a respected scientist-pleated shorts, lots of pockets, baggy shirt-but on this chilly morning she wore business slacks and a suit jacket in mourning black. Her face was gaunt from lack of sleep, her brown hair dull as winter leaves. I was there for moral support, which consisted of providing a shoulder to cry on-she’d already done that a couple of times-and an attentive ear. Let her talk away some of the pain.

Talking about her brother’s disorder was part of the process. Perhaps because the subject had once been a source of shame.

As I listened, I also allowed my attention to shift to the bilge switch, periodically, and the amount of water leaking into my boat. I’d loaded it on the trailer the previous night and found a radiating crack near the starboard chine. I suspected this would be the last time I’d be aboard.

I flicked the bilge switch now, then accelerated onto a slow plane, as Frieda continued talking. “Asperger’s is a milder form of autism. Some call it ‘high functioning’ autism. Growing up, kids with Asperger’s lack basic social skills most of us are born with. They tend to focus their interest on objects, not people.

“Jobe had a tough time learning to talk. He didn’t like being around people, and he was obsessed with orderliness. He… well, here’s an example. He always counted his Cheerios, and separated M amp;M’s by color. His toys had to be arranged exactly the way he wanted. If anything screwed up our daily routine, he’d run around flapping his hands and crying. He wasn’t a brat. Emotionally, he was just incapable of handling disorder.

“Things in the external world-noise, certain smells, harsh light-it affects autistics differently. Seeing the color orange, for example-neon orange?-it made Jobe wince. Hearing several people speaking at the same time drove him nuts. He loved the sound of trains, though; the rhythm-but only from a certain distance. Amtrak goes through Kissimmee, the perfect distance, and one of the reasons he chose Night’s Landing. That, plus it’s close to Disney World.”

“He did environmental work for Disney?”

“Some. But that’s not what I meant. Jobe was uncomfortable in public places. Disney World was the exception. You’ve been, of course.”

“No. Never.”

“Really? Well, my brother had a love-hate relationship with the place. Disney is the most orderly place on earth. Every venue is predictable and tidy. No surprises, no clutter. Jobe liked that. On the other hand, he hated what the theme park industry has done to Central Florida.”

Even so, she said, her brother went often, always by himself.

“Otherwise, autistics tend to retreat into their own internal world. A place where they can fixate in peace. With Jobe, it was water and numbers. He was hooked on both. Did you try to call him on the phone?”

“Yeah. His message was strange-leave your four-digit birthday, zeros included. Like it had something to do with astrology. I didn’t expect that.”

“No, not astrology. My brother couldn’t remember names-they were words. But he never forgot a birth date. That’s how he cataloged people. Phone numbers weren’t good enough. Phone numbers change. That would have been upsetting He even referred to family members by number. Our father was ‘10-7.’ October seventh. Our mother was ‘3-2.’ March second. He called me ‘6-6-4,’ because I was born a few minutes before him on June sixth. See how it works?”

I started to say, “I thought autism was a form of mental…” but caught myself.

Frieda patted my knee. “You were about to say ‘retardation.’ It’s okay. Most people think autistics are also retarded. About half are. IQs less than seventy. But some of those are savants. They don’t have the intellectual capacity to use a calculator, but they can look at a pile of toothpicks and tell you the exact number. Remember the film, Rain Man? That’s Jobe.

“Aspies are like alien beings who aren’t programmed to understand normal social behavior. They can’t decode body language, or sense the feelings of others. Even motives. Especially motives. If I told my brother that I wanted him to rob a bank as part of an experiment, he wouldn’t see it as sinister. It was an experiment, so that would make it okay.”

She added, “It makes them vulnerable. Early on, they learn to understand that they’re easy targets for cons and practical jokes. So Jobe preferred his own little world. No one was allowed in. Not even me, his twin. I learned never, ever, to push, because it doesn’t pay to piss off an Aspie.”

In my mind, I could hear the man’s voice crying over and over, I can’t, as if apologizing for being unable to cooperate.

Frieda said, “When we were kids, the doctors didn’t bother testing him-this was thirty years ago, remember. He didn’t talk, wouldn’t interact, so he was labeled retarded. Autism wasn’t recognized as a neurological disorder until we were middle school age.”’

But when Jobe was five, she told me, he stopped at a table where his mother was doing a complicated jigsaw puzzle. He studied it for a few minutes, then began to lock pieces together. Never paused, not one misjudgment. In twenty minutes, he’d finished a puzzle that would have taken an adult a week.

“Our mom was so darn happy; running around, laughing. Her so-called mentally retarded son had just demonstrated that he was actually very gifted.”

Further testing proved that the boy had an extraordinary gift for mathematics. He could multiply long columns of numbers instantly and factor cube roots in seconds. Jobe’s family was elated.

The elation, Frieda said, didn’t last.

Because of his behavioral problems, his tantrums and refusal to interact with people, doctors decided that if the boy wasn’t mentally retarded, then he must be mentally ill. At age six, Jobe was diagnosed as schizophrenic and social-phobic, with a severe anxiety disorder.

I’d turned my skiff into the island’s channel, slowing for the boat basin ahead, as Frieda added, “It was considered a dangerous combination. Particularly dangerous for me, his sister. I needed to be protected, they said. Jobe had never hurt me, but the potential was there. So doctors insisted that my parents have him institutionalized. He spent the next four years in an asylum, being medicated and treated just like the rest of the crazies.”

But, when she was eleven, Frieda said, their father read a news item about Asperger’s. He contacted one of the country’s few experts and had his son reevaluated.